The Eagles defeated two opponents on Sunday Night Football, dispatching the Los Angeles Rams and their zebra allies by a final score of 37 to 20. Whining about the refs isn’t usually the go-to move, but both pre-garbage-time LA scores came on drives where the Birds were flagged for defensive pass interference in the red zone, and only one was borderline justifiable.

You take those plays away and this game is not even close. The Eagles were the better team from the start of the second quarter to the final tick of the clock. Saquon Barkley ran it for 255 yards (!!!), A.J. Brown looked like prime Terrell Owens, as is usually the case, and Jalen Hurts once again did not turn the ball over while throwing for a touchdown and doing some nice things with his feet to keep plays alive and move the chains.

And on the defensive side? Same as usual. After two rough drives, the D settled in and more or less shut it down from there.

It was a solid win. This Rams team isn’t a Super Bowl contender, but they were 5-5 and playing better football in recent weeks. Whenever you go to the opposite coast and come back with a W, you’re happy with it no matter what, and it gives the Birds some breathing room atop the division after the Commanders’ loss to Dallas. With Baltimore and Pittsburgh coming up, moving to 9-2 and keeping train rolling is a great thing to behold. Choo choo!

To the observations:


1) Little bit of a shit show with the Kyren Williams fumble on the opening drive. You could see Nick Sirianni annoyed with his support staff for not relaying the challenge information quick enough, but the closest referee ruled the play down by contact, which wasn’t even close to being the right call. The fact that it had to go to review at all is crazy. It was the most obvious of fumbles.

2) You could hear the Eagles fans loud and clear on the first offensive drive. Philly always takes Los Angeles over. It never gets old.

3) Lovely scoring drive to start it off, at least until they got into the red zone. The play calling between the 20s was varied, with Hurts hitting Dallas Goedert and Brown, plus couple of tough runs for Saquon. There was a QB power with pulling linemen in which Hurts ran over Barkley for a decent gain. They just bottled it a bit inside the Rams’ 15, with some running plays that didn’t go for much, followed by a 3rd and goal Andy Reid shovel pass that triggered PTSD in all five of my uncles. Still, good drive for 3 points.

4) Good to see Sirianni send out Jake Elliott without hesitation for the first field goal. Feels like a Captain Obvious type of observation, but after last Thursday’s adventure, just seeing Elliott put an easy one through the uprights was a proper way to get it started.

5) Say what you will about Slay’s pass interference (totally iffy), to set up 1st and goal from the one, but the defense was underwhelming on the entirety of that first LA touchdown drive. The couple of times they were able to generate a pass rush, Matt Stafford had to chuck it incomplete, but they didn’t put up much resistance at all.

6) Timely three and out on the Rams’ third drive, with a key PBU from Cooper DeJean. Three straight passes for LA, then a punt. They were running the ball well at that point but didn’t hand it off on that drive.

7) “Sometimes you just take it in the wrong spot,” said Mike Tirico after Saquon got walloped right in the nuts.

8) It had been a while since the Birds were flagged for ineligible man downfield. That streak is over because Landon Dickerson was blocking downfield on a pass that went behind the line of scrimmage for Jahan Dotson. He made up for by obliterating some fool during Saquon’s first TD run.

9) Hurts missed Goedert in the end zone on a surefire touchdown pass. No matter, because Dotson lined up offside. On the ensuing play, Goedert was flagged for illegal motion because he started running his route before the ball was snapped. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?!

10) Shades of Super Bowl 52 with that Brandon Graham sack. Same orientation, same side. He totally clobbered Stafford. Beautiful.

11) The return of Britain Covey means that he’s getting absolutely blasted on these punt returns, then getting up like nothing happened.

12) Omar Speights? The only Speights we recognize is Sixers legend Marreese Speights.

13) Guy holding the sound equipment got CRUSHED:

14) THAT’S A TOUCHDOWN! I think we all tweeted it, thought it, or yelled it at our spouse at the same time. Talking about the A.J. Brown score, of course. Refs reviewed it and got it right. (Nice to see them throw into the end zone in the red zone, isn’t it? It shouldn’t always have to come down to the tush push).

15) Rough drive for people on the sidelines. Not only did the sound guy get smacked, but the security guard went face-first into the wall here:

16) The Eagles were doing.. what exactly, before halftime? They sacked Stafford to get to the locker room, but gave the Rams the ball back with a 4th down Hurts run that went for a yardage loss. It should have started with calling a timeout after the LA 2nd down play, instead they waited for the 3rd down, which crippled any real shot of moving into field goal range. For all the good things that have happened during the winning streak, you’re still concerned about the Sirianni + Kellen Moore finer detail issues when it comes to situational decision making and play calling.

17) a stat:

18) SAQUON BARKLEY TO THE FUCKING HOUSE! (2x)

(There were a couple of sequences in the first half where you felt like was close to breaking one. You sense that, don’t you? He’s liable to rip one off at any moment, and he did it again, twice)

19) B.G. almost destroyed the Rams’ first second-half drive all by himself. 1st down, a stuff for a six-yard loss. Second down, a QB hit for an incompletion. It was 3rd and 16 when LA was awarded another set of downs on another questionable pass interference call, but Graham looked like he turned the clock back 10 years in this one. He left the game with an elbow injury, but man, did he look like classic B.G. in this game.

20) Speaking of the interference call, you tell me:

They put James Bradberry’s name up on the graphic. Funny/sad at the same time.

21) That was pretty cool seeing Saquon congratulate Kenny Gainwell on his touchdown run. Gainwell has been lowkey solid as a backup this year, so for him to find the end zone was really nice. It was, of course, Barkley’s 3rd and 10 screen pass + YAC nastiness that got the Birds into the red zone, but Gainwell had a distance to go to score.

22) Tough job for Isaiah Rodgers chasing Puca Nacua around, but let’s not act like Slay was doing any better before he left the game with a concussion. At the end of the day, you knew Nacua was going to get his, and you’re willing to live with it when you look at other limited offensive production from guys like Cooper Kupp, who were mostly invisible before garbage time.

23) Satisfying: Rams get flagged for holding, then Stafford is sacked, then the kicker comes out and shanks a field goal. Awesome!

24) A.J. Brown is a sneaky-good YAC player. They list him at 6’1″, 227, but he’s shifty when he gets some space and makes some really tight turns immediately after the catch. He had two nice sequences in this game where he ripped off more yardage than he probably should have.

25) Elliott finished 3-3 on field goals, 4-4 on extra points. He didn’t kick anything long, but looked like himself after the Washington aberration.

26) “We haven’t talked about Quinyon Mitchell a lot tonight.” Because quarterbacks aren’t throwing at him. He gave a garbage time TD when Sydney Brown was playing safety. I’m sure PFF will dock him 100 percentage points for that, but it matters not.

27) The refs called OPI on Nacua in the fourth quarter, but only when the game was pretty much over. Don’t let ’em off the hook.

28) The title of this post has nothing to do with the game. I just wanted to shout out one of Tupac’s most underrated songs. As far as I know, it doesn’t have anything to do with the 1985 movie of the same name: